


Daybreak

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (A linear narrative? In this economy?), Ahch-To, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Ben Solo, Bisexual Kylo Ren, Bisexuality, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mortis - Freeform, Multi, Nonlinear Narrative, Open Ending, Polyamory, Rey Nobody, Rey Palpatine, Sedoretu, Vaginal Sex, Vomit, bisexual rey, no one is related, the world between worlds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:41:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29024391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: Light and Dark wed for dawn and dusk.  She’d never have thought that she’d marry so quickly, that love and life could be waiting for her beyond the wastes of Jakku.  But they had been.  They were.  They are.  And she’s married now.  Two husbands and a wife.  Two Dark lovers and one Light…
Relationships: Ben Solo/Kylo Ren - Relationship, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Rey (Star Wars)
Comments: 36
Kudos: 126
Collections: Queerly Beloved Reylo Fics





	1. Morning

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t even remember where I stumbled across this trope, but I stumbled across this trope several months ago and my brain went “ahh well, this isn’t for right now” but apparently the idea never really left and decided to emerge on its own so here we are.  
> Since I’ve never actually read the book that it originates from, I’m interpreting this trope based on its [Fanlore page](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Sedoretu):
>
>> Marriage on O is a foursome, the sedoretu — a man and a woman from the Morning moiety and a man and a woman from the Evening moiety. You're expected to have sex with both your spouses of the other moiety, and not to have sex with your spouse of your own moiety. So each sedoretu has two expected heterosexual relationships, two expected homosexual relationships, and two forbidden heterosexual relationships.
>> 
>> The expected relationships within each sedoretu are:
>> 
>> The Morning woman and the Evening man (the "Morning marriage")  
> The Evening woman and the Morning man (the "Evening marriage")  
> The Morning woman and the Evening woman (the "Day marriage")  
> The Morning man and the Evening man (the "Night marriage")
>> 
>> The forbidden relationships are between the Morning woman and the Morning man, and between the Evening woman and the Evening man, and they aren't called anything, except sacrilege.
>> 
>> It's just as complicated as it sounds, but aren't most marriages?
> 
> Morning (or Light): Rey & Ben  
> Evening (or Dark): Kira & Kylo
> 
> Lastly, the art for each chapter is done by the wonderful and talented lilithsaur! Thank you to Jeeno2 and the_once_and_future_thing for looking at this for me!

_Rey wakes to the feeling of Kylo’s hands on her hips, his breath on her back, his fingers sliding up and down her slit and she sighs and parts her legs._

_“Morning,” he whispers to her as he presses into her. She’s not wet enough yet, though, and he hears him spit into his hand and rubs it against his cock. She hears him spit again and this time wet saliva is dripping along the crack between her ass and her cunt and his fingers rub her and prod her again. This time, when he tries to push in, his skin doesn’t grate against hers as much. It’s a little smoother, and a little easier. Gone are the days when she didn’t feel as though she’d be able to fit him, be able to stretch around him. Gone are the days where it feels jarring to wake up to him hard and rubbing against her._

_His balls slap against her clit and his moans are loud enough for it to echo through the Falcon. You always know when Kylo’s having sex because he doesn’t keep it to himself. “Fuck, Rey.”_

_“You’re so tight like this.”_

_“More. Louder,” he always urges her because when she’s close to coming she lets out these little moans in the back of her throat, nothing like his. “Please. Let me hear you.”_

_He always starts to beg when he’s close. She likes it when he begs. It makes her feel powerful, even though he’s got her on her stomach and is fucking her into the mattress._ Let me hear you, Rey. Love me, please, Rey.

_“Kylo,” she whimpers and he comes, collapsing onto her as his dick pulses into her. Hard and fast, first thing in the morning. If she wants him longer, she has to find him later in the day, when he’ll lick her until she’s come four times and then he’ll fuck her in the ass. But first thing in the morning, it’s hard and fast and in whatever position she wakes in._

_“Morning,” he mumbles this time into her neck. His fingers find her cunt again, find her clit, and he rubs her until she’s trembling underneath him, clenching around his now slack dick._

_“Morning,” she replies. She drifts back into a lazy doze._

_When she wakes again, Kylo is gone._

-

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Ben mutters from the cockpit as they break atmo. It’s morning, or maybe evening. They can’t tell. The planet rotates but it doesn’t orbit. It seems to exist outside of the normal bounds of space.

“You worry too much,” Kira tells him, but Rey sees her hand reach forward to rest on Ben’s shoulder out of the corner of her eye. 

“I don’t worry too much, you all don’t worry enough,” Ben mutters.

“Relax, will you?” Kylo asks from behind Rey.

But it’s hard to relax. Rey’s sure that Ben’s reaction comes from the same thing she’s feeling as they steer the _Falcon_ together towards a set of bluffs up ahead. It feels like her body is vibrating, like it’s alive in a new way, a way she doesn’t understand, and yet a way she’s known her whole life. 

“You feel that?” she asks the rest of the cockpit. No one answers, and she knows the silence to be assent.

They land and she’s up and out of her seat immediately. “Hang on,” Kylo says, grabbing her arm.

“I want to—”

“We need to figure out who’s actually going and who’s staying.”

“I just want to see what the air tastes like.” Kylo’s eyes, usually hard, usually guarded, soften. “I’ll be back soon. I promise.”

His head jerks in a nod and his hand loosens on Rey’s bicep and off she goes. She knows they’ll decide without her. She doesn’t need to be there when they do.

She knows how it’ll go: Kylo will propose something, Ben’ll counter propose several other options, Kira will snark, Ben’ll get huffy, and they’ll land with Kylo going, Ben staying to tend the ship, and maybe Kira, maybe Rey, maybe both going with Kylo. 

She walks down the ramp and takes a deep breath. It’s floral, and mossy. Dewy, maybe. The air around her hums with light and darkness, the trees sway in a light breeze, rustling their leaves, and off in the distance she hears the crash of a waterfall. It’s not dry, and harsh. It’s gentle, and soft, and—

“Beautiful.”

“Isn’t it?” she says, turning and smiling at Kylo who’s coming down the ramp, clipping his lightsaber to his belt. 

“I meant you,” he says. She rolls her eyes. 

“You can do better than that.”

“Can I?” he asks, and his hand brushes her ass as he passes her. “Kira’s staying behind with Ben.”

“That was quick.”

“He didn’t want to get off the ship. Something about this place has got him real spooked.” It’s not mocking she hears in Kylo’s dry voice. Sometimes he and Ben can try to one-up one another. She assumes it’s machismo, except when she remembers that she and Kira do it too, sometimes. No, she hears concern there, a nervous edge. 

“In and out?” she proposes. _You feel how much the Force there is here, too._

“In and out,” he agrees and together they walk along the edge of the cliff.

_-_

_Kylo once trained to be a Jedi. Now he doesn’t. He doesn’t talk about it anymore, and Rey wonders where the scar across his eye came from._

_Kira was once a slumlord, from the undercities on Corellia. She has a tattoo on her hip that looks like an eye that she purposefully doesn’t talk about._

_They’re both Dark, and not to be stereotypical, but they both look it. They brood and it looks like the galaxy would tremble._

_Ben’s Light, though, like Rey. He used to help his dad with smuggling runs. He doesn’t anymore._

_In all the stories that Rey had heard about Luke Skywalker and Han Solo growing up, she’d never once heard about Ben. He is bitter about it, but his brooding doesn’t look like it would make the galaxy tremble. It does make Rey want to take his hand, though._

_Is that allowed?_

_“Why wouldn’t it be?” Kira asks her sharply when she whispers it in the dark to her one night._

_“Because—”_

_“Because it’s taboo?” Kira asks her. She snorts. “As long as you’re not fucking him, no one cares. You’re married to him, after all. Why wouldn’t you hug him, or hold him, or take his hand? He likes holding hands,” she adds._

_Rey swallows._

_Light and Dark wed for dawn and dusk. She’d never have thought that she’d marry so quickly, that love and life could be waiting for her beyond the wastes of Jakku. But they had been. They were. They are. And she’s married now. Two husbands and a wife. Two Dark lovers and one Light…_

_She loves him too, though. But you’re not supposed to sleep with your moiety. It is, as Kira said, taboo. There isn’t much by way of society on Jakku, but that much was written in the stars._

_But she doesn’t want to sleep with Ben, even if he’s good on the eyes. She doesn’t need to kiss him, even if his lips are incredible, especially when he gives that crooked smile. She’s fine just holding his hand, and taking comfort in the fact that she’s not alone anymore._

_None of them are._

-

“How long have we been going?” Rey asks, eying the sun on the horizon. It’s dawn, or maybe dusk—she doesn’t know what direction she’s facing, and the sun hasn’t moved at all. All she knows is that there are flowers everywhere on the verge of blooming, and the air is thick with the scent of them. She wonders what it will smell like when the buds burst. 

“This is a strange place,” is Kylo’s only reply. Rey doesn’t like that. Kylo has traveled more of the stars than she has. He’s studied the blackest parts of the Force and he’s good at them. He is true to his Dark roots. She doesn’t like that he doesn’t respond.

Because it probably means he doesn’t know the answer.

She starts counting.

She’s been counting the whole time, of course. A nervous habit from Jakku. You weren’t supposed to stay out in the sun for too long, but how did you know what was too long? The steady metronome of your own heart would tell you, and Rey knew her own heartbeat so well at this point that even without having to stop and think she knows _it’s been two hours._

Two hours of sun against the horizon.

“Maybe we’re at a pole and it’s close to the solstice.” But Ben’s a good navigator—the best pilot of all of them, and he never shoots for the poles. “Maybe the Force guided his landing and brought us further off center than usual.”

“Maybe,” Kylo says, but doesn’t continue. She can tell his mind is racing. She can feel the tension rippling off his body. With every passing step, she knows that he is remembering Ben’s _I’ve got a bad feeling about this,_ and remembering—the same way that Rey does—that whenever Ben’s got a bad feeling, he’s usually right.

She watches as his fingers clench over nothing. There’s no reason for him to draw his cross-guarded lightsaber, no reason for him to reach out with the Force and freeze all life around them for a hundred feet. He’s war-born, war-trained, and always the fastest to react when there’s a threat. It had taken Rey longer than she knew how to understand to realize that she felt safe with Kylo at her side—safety in a way she’d never known. He was a rioter, a warrior, and he wouldn’t let anything touch her, touch any of them.

And this—it just feels off, eerie, hard. 

-

_It’s not easy, falling in love._

_It’s painful, and frightening._

_Rey hasn’t been afraid of much in her life, but she’s afraid of falling in love._

_And Kylo smells it on her like a dog smells blood._

_“Why?” he asks her._

_“Why wouldn’t I be?” she demands._

_“Everyone’s a little different, you see.” His voice is dry, his eyes hooded. “So I don’t really get why you’d be afraid.”_

_Because what if I lose you, she thinks._

_That’s the scary part. Having someone, and then maybe losing them._

_Memories plague her, or maybe they’re nightmares. They have all her life. There’s that ardent, intense belief that she’ll be found again, but when she closes her eyes, it’s come back, the stink of cheap beer, and endless days counting and counting and counting. Almost five thousand days’ worth. It would be five thousand, if she’d stayed on Jakku._

_It would never be five thousand because they’d found her, and wanted her. “Let the past die,” Kylo tells her. “Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way you can become who you were meant to be.”_

_He’s not her, though, and she thinks it means something else for him. Especially because a shadow crosses his face._

-

They come across a large structure an hour later, immense blocks of stone carved together to make something akin to a palace or a temple. The sun still sits low in the sky, but hasn’t set, or risen. Kylo unclips his lightsaber and Rey does the same with hers. He nods to her, and together they step inside.

It’s like everything muffles around them. Where before, Rey had felt as though the Force flowed through her completely, now was more akin to the wind around her on Jakku—ruffling her clothes but never quite reaching her skin if she’d covered herself properly. But more importantly—

“It feels like something died,” Rey whispers.

Kylo nods. “Something big,” he agrees.

Rey swallows, her throat suddenly thick. Grief is what she feels, deep down in her core. Not her own grief, but someone else’s. Someone else’s and yet this was also how she’d felt when she’d admitted the truth about her parents, when Kylo had made her say it— _you know the truth, go on—_ and she’d felt something so sharp right between her ribs she’d wondered if she’d been stabbed. _They’re gone. They’re gone. They’re gone. They’re gone._

“Who?” Kylo is standing in front of her, looking concerned. “Who’s gone?”

Rey looks around. Up ahead, at the end of this great stone passage, is a high hall. Her feet carry her ahead, her steps echoing all around her. Kylo follows, igniting his lightsaber which bleeds the dimness of the windowless building. 

The room is huge, perfectly circular with patterns on the floor. Ahead of her is the depiction of an old man carved into the wall. To her left, a young woman. To her right, a young man. _They’re gone,_ her heart echoes through her chest. _They’re gone. They’re gone. They’re never coming back._

“I’m so sorry,” she chokes out, tears dripping down her face. “I’m sorry—I don’t know who they are. But I’m sorry.”

She sinks to her knees in the middle of the great room and looks around hopelessly, helplessly and lets the misery have her.

-

_Light, Dark._

_Morning, Evening._

_Dawn, Dusk._

_Day, Night._

_Rey doesn’t remember how she learned all of them. They all mean the same thing, different people refer to them in different ways. It’s all just words for the same thing. Except it’s not, too._

_Dusk and Night aren’t the same, even if both are Dark._

_Same with Dawn and Day._

_She hears people talk about equal and opposite._

_It’s not really until she meets Ben and Kylo that she sees that. Equal and opposite, and yet, somehow, the same. There isn’t much different about them, it’s just volumes._

_Kylo’s anger is hotter, but just because Ben’s anger is quiet doesn’t mean it’s not there. She’s not really sure why Kylo’s Dark and Ben’s light though. Anger could be quiet and dark, just as it could be hot and black. But those are their moieties, just as much as Rey’s is light._

But there’s darkness in me too, _she tries to remember not to think._

_Days spent scraping a count into metal, nights spent desperately weary, begging to sleep. Days were too hot, nights too cold. Not balanced, not temperate. The good thing about the night was that there were stars._

Who decides moieties anyway. Your parents?

_She didn’t think her parents would have, and it feels like a stupid question to ask as an adult. She just knows this is what she is, who she’s always been._

_It’s not until she’s with them, though, that she starts to find joy in darkness, hope in light, and always, always, that burning question of_ why?

Why did you leave me?

Why do you love me?

Why am I who I am?

-

Kylo waits a full five minutes before stepping away from her. He approaches the carving of the old man first, lifting his lightsaber to illuminate it. It was painted at one point. The outline of an old man’s hand points directly up in the remains of gold leafing. 

“Daylight,” he says, looking back at Rey. “I think these might have been—” he cuts himself off, looking at the other two carvings. The young man’s hand is held in a fist; the woman’s lower, closer to her waist. “They are evening and morning,” he says at last.

“But there’s only three of them,” Rey replies.

_They’re gone. They’re gone. They left me._

“We’re never leaving you, Rey,” Kylo bursts out, hurrying back to her. “I don’t know what you’re hearing, or feeling, but you’re never being left behind again.” His lightsaber clatters to the floor, disengaging with a hiss as he gathers Rey into his arms. 

“I know,” she says. “I think—”

“They left me,” comes a woman’s voice and she and Kylo both turn.

Standing behind them in the archway to the hallway they’d arrived through is—

She doesn’t glow. You can’t glow if you’re darkness. It reminds Rey of the Darksaber of Mandalore that Ben had once told her about. Darkness that is so intense it seems bright—the way that silence can be loud. But she stands there, glowing darkness at them, her face distraught as she stares into the face of the old man on the wall behind her. 

“Gone,” and her whisper echoes like thunder. “They’re gone. They’re gone. They’re gone. They’re gone.”

-

_“What do you two talk about?”_

_Kylo glances at Rey and barks out a laugh, glancing over his shoulder at Kira who he’d been deep in conversation with until Rey came out of the cockpit. “The weather.”_

_She flushes. “I didn’t mean to—”_

_“We talk about stuff. I don’t know. What do you and Ben talk about?”_

_She flushes._

_“You talk about us, don’t you?” Kylo asks drily. “That right? How best to fuck us?”_

_“No,” she lies. Lies because it’s some of what they talked about. Ben had been the one to tell her how much Kylo liked his asshole fingered, had been the one to tell her to suck on a freckle on Kira’s neck while making her come. But they talked about other things too. Flying, and… and..._

_And things. Just things sometimes. The same sorts of things that she and Kylo, or she and Kira talked about whenever it was just the two of them. Only she and Ben don’t do it naked._

_Kylo sighs. When he looks at her, it’s almost with pity in his eyes. She doesn’t like pity._

_“Come here, sunshine,” he says._

_“Don’t call me sunshine,” she replies at once. She hates the pun. It isn’t like Kylo to pun, but the second he’d heard Ben joking with it, he’d grabbed it and used it. He likes to rile her up. He likes to rile everyone up. It makes the sex better, yes, but Rey thinks it’s more than that. It’s also about him feeling as though he’s worth the effort. He spent so much of his youth being told he was nothing, worthless, rabid and feral. If he gets people annoyed at him, at least he knows he has gotten their attention._

_“Look,” he says gently. “It’s hard.”_

_“What’s hard?” Rey asks._

_“Learning to love, and letting yourself be loved, and realizing you love people in different ways. That’s ok. Don’t be jealous of Kira.”_

_“I’m not jealous of Kira,” Rey replies at once. She means it. She isn’t._

_Or at least, not about Kylo._

_She shoves that thought away, though._ It’s taboo _, she tells herself. It’s law, it’s what’s right. She could love Ben differently from the rest. She didn’t have to want more. She could control herself._

_“No?” Kylo asks quietly._

_She swallows, and stands up on her tiptoes. “I’m not,” she says, and kisses him. “I promise.”_

_“You and Ben talk about stuff, right?” he asks her, his hands wrapped around her hips now, holding her in place. “You have something that you don’t have with me or her, right?” He sounds suddenly nervous. Why nervous? What was he afraid of?_

_Rey thinks._

_She thinks of Ben’s smile, the way he mutters under his breath when he’s thinking out loud, the way the two of them seemed to gravitate towards one another. He’s her best friend of the four of them, reliable, understanding, patient, endlessly kind. She loves Kylo, she loves Kira but there’s something about Ben that shines like the sun. “Yeah, we talk about stuff,” she says._

_“Good,” Kylo says, and there is a flicker in his eyes._

_“You’re not jealous, are you?” she asks, trying to sound dry._

_“No,” he says too quickly._

_“Because it sounds like—” He captures her lips in a kiss._

_“I’m not jealous,” he breathes into her lips. “I have both of you. What do I have to be jealous of?”_

_But she could hear in his voice the same knot in her own stomach._

_It makes her wonder how tightly the bonds that kept him from Kira chafed at his wrists._

-

“Why did you bring us here?” Kylo’s voice cuts into the darkness as the woman, ghost, entity sobs in the doorway. The moment he says it, Rey understands it’s the truth. What else would call to all of them across the stars, would set Ben’s teeth on edge? They had to have been called for. She was calling for them now.

She doesn’t answer right away. She just keeps shuddering, keeps whimpering. When she does at last look at Rey, it’s with dark, hungry eyes.

“You look like her,” she tells Rey, her voice hollow, almost windlike. 

Rey glances at the mosaic on the wall. The young woman has green hair, and a long face. She looks nothing like Rey.

“You are bright like she was,” the entity corrects as though she could read Rey’s thoughts. “You are day. So was she. She was so—”

Kylo stands between the both of them, his lightsaber bleeding red between them. Rey can’t see his face, just the arrow-straight line of his back, his broad shoulders, his narrow hips. 

“Why did you bring us here?” he growls this time.

The entity’s sobs echo around them. “I loved him, though he was light. He loved me though I was dark. Our children—they loved each other too. Light and dark—they’re meant to love one another. You can’t have one without the other.” Rey swallows. _I have Ben, though. I have light too. I don’t only love the darkness._ “And they’re _gone_. I can’t be dark without them.”

A sense of foreboding fills her, and her hand drifts to the hilt of her own lightsaber. Her mouth is dry, her mind’s on a spaceship that’s flying off into the bright blue once again. _Come back_.

_Mother?_

“You can’t have her,” Kylo hisses.

“I don’t want her,” the mother sobs. “I want my own girl back. I want to see her again. I want to hold my son, and fall asleep to the sound of my husband’s breath. I can’t be alone anymore. I _can’t_.”

-

_She feels as though she could fling herself into an abyss with Kylo and she wouldn’t die alone._

_Her body is spent, and sweaty, and she’s still sitting on his cock and he’s looking up at her with hungry eyes. His hand traces the line from her belly to her sternum to find the dip between her shoulder blades. His touch is a whisper, which is just about all she can take at the moment, even on skin so far from her sex._

_“Beautiful,” he murmurs as she looks down at him as though she’s fevered. Her skin is so hot from how fast her heart has been racing that even the slightest tickle of his breath in the air feels like the wind blowing across the Jakku sands._

_“I’m not done yet,” she tells him._

_“I know you’re not,” he replies and she feels him swell inside her for just a moment. If you were done, it would be my turn. His words float across her mind and she tries to smile at him. Maybe her heart will settle. Maybe it won’t. She can’t decide how she wants to do this next._

Don’t push yourself too hard, _was the main thing anyone ever said in the sands._ If you do, the heat will take you and the sand will rub the skin from your bones and leave your muscle and fat for the birds. 

_Rey had never much liked being told what to do. That was something that was true for all of them, really. Kylo with his horrible masters, Ben with his finely cultivated stubbornness, Kira’s survival through the bloody warfare that was the criminal underground. But she’d never once pushed herself too hard in the Jakku sands. She didn’t want to be a feast for crows—not when there might be family searching for her._

_But Kylo—_

_“You going to—”_

_“I’m getting there.”_

_“Are you?”_

_His thumb brushes her clit and good fuck she’s sensitive right now. Her whole body convulses and she practically shrieks from it, her hands coming down hard on his chest. “I’m getting there,” she snaps._

_He doesn’t mind the smack. He’s tried to get her to choke him once or twice during sex. Sometimes, he likes to be told he’s nothing, he’s worthless, but she doesn’t want to do that. (She doesn’t want to think about whether Ben will either.) But clutching at his skin until there’s claw marks, smacking his ass when he’s a brat—that she doesn’t mind. He smirks up at her._

_“You going to show me what you’ve got?”_

_He makes her lose control. Control is what you need to survive the desert, but she’s not in the desert anymore, she can afford to be hot-headed and impulsive with him, she can afford to throw herself into an abyss until she’s gasping and roiling and hazy-headed. She can let herself rise and fall as he pushes her off him and hovers over her and throws himself into the abyss too._

_She isn’t constrained by the desert, she isn’t constrained even by her own mind. She is and can be all she ever dreamed to be._

-

Rey steps out from behind Kylo, her own yellow blade illuminating. 

“Rey,” he says sharply, but she’s quick as she steps towards the mother.

She seems smaller the closer that Rey gets to her. Where she’d loomed in the darkness, loomed _as_ darkness before, she seems to shrink with each of Rey’s approaching steps. By the time that Rey is standing before her, she stands taller than her. Shadows flee to the corners of her face when Rey holds her saber close. Somehow, the darkness fades to dusk in the face of Rey’s light.

Her face looks both old and young, weary and innocent. There is hope in her eyes as she looks at Rey.

“Is this really what you want?” Rey asks her.

When the mother speaks again, it’s with a familiar voice.

_I’ll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise._

Liar.

“I never wanted any of this. But I’d rather it be by the light than by the dark.”

Rey’s eyes narrow. “If you’re asking me to do it, then the darkness is doing it.”

“But I see you in her.”

_And I see her in you._

She disengages the lightsaber, shifts her hand slightly, then reengages it.

The darkness fades.

The room had been buzzing. Rey didn’t even notice it until it went silent.

-

_Kylo teaches her how to want._

_Not that she doesn’t know what want is, but there’s a difference between wanting home and family, wanting a full belly, a roof over her head and wanting—_

_“Go on. Say it.”_

_“Kylo.” She tries not to squirm. She’s not squeamish about it. She’s touched herself thinking about this before. But it feels like something else, saying it out loud. Kylo could—and has—very easily pulled it from her mind because she’s shown it to him there._

_“Say it.”_

_“_ Why _? You know what I want.”_

_“How can I know if you won’t say it?” he asks mulishly. He’s half hard and mostly naked and this is frustrating as all hell. “You can’t want it enough if you won’t say it.”_

_She tackles him, shoves him back onto the bed, straddles his chest, growls at him because they’d called her Hellcat on Jakku, she’s not someone who’ll take something like that said about her without a fight. Kylo smirks up at her. “Great view,” he says, brushing a finger along the underside of her tits, sending a shiver through her and causing her nipples to pebble. She glares. “What do you want?”_

_“You know what I want.”_

_“We can go on like this for days.”_

_“Why?” she demands again._

_“See?” he retorts._

_She gets up and stalks out of the bedchamber, her shirt still off, going to find Kira. Kira doesn’t make her feel like she’s opening wounds when they fuck at least._

_Kira and Ben are playing djarik and Ben raises his eyebrows and looks away when he sees she’s topless._

_“Come on,” Rey growls, reaching for Kira’s arm._

_“No, no, no, I’m not getting in the middle of this,” Kira says, jerking her arm away._

_“He’s insufferable,” Rey snaps, knowing that Kylo can hear her._

_“Easy to recognize when you’re insufferable too,” Kylo calls from the bunk she’d just abandoned. She hates that she knows he’s probably palming his cock, probably making himself harder for when she inevitably returns to bed._

_“What did he do?” Kira asks, not unkindly._

_But it sounds juvenile even to her own ears when she tries to think of how to say it, so she doesn’t even get that far. She just lets out an exasperated groan, turns on her heel and stalks away, back to the bedroom, slamming her hand on the door panel so that it fizzles closed behind her._

_“Off,” she says, pointing to his pants. He does indeed have his hand around his cock and he is fully hard now as he smirks at her. He doesn’t give her lip, at least, when he strips his pants down his legs._

_“Now what?” he asks innocently._

_“I hate you,” she mutters._

_“I hear that makes for better sex,” he replies blithely as she unbuckles her belt and removes her own pants._

_She straddles his hips and says, “I’d like to ride you, please and thank you.”_

_“Oh, sweetheart, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”_

_She doesn’t reply because she’s sucking on his neck as she fumbles his dick into her and begins to hump him. His hands come to rest on her hips and she knows he’ll try and guide her pace and—_

_“No, let me,” she snaps at him._

_He chuckles and removes his hands, snaking them up her chest to toy with her nipples instead. She closes her eyes. She’s more frustrated than she should be. She doesn’t want to be frustrated. Why does he have to be so infuriating all the damn time?_

_“Because you deserve to want things,” he murmurs in her ear. “Because you’re afraid of letting yourself want things. And how can you become who you were meant to be if you don’t know how to voice what you want?”_

_“This isn’t some existential journey, this is fucking,” she snaps._

_“And how can I know you mean it for real if you won’t say it? I can read your mind but I can’t read your mind,” he tells her. She hates how gentle he sounds now. She hates that he’s the reasonable one right now. She’s used to him being the angry one, the loud one. He’s not supposed to be the reasonable one. He’s the least reasonable of the four of them. “There are so many things we want but we don’t get them if we don’t do something about that want. You deserve what you want, Rey. God—you deserve so much.”_

_She must be riding him really well if he’s already hitting the unmitigated praise part of the fucking. She doesn’t know how to say what he wants and he still can’t believe he gets what he wants—_

_And neither can she._

_She groans because she gets it. “Fuck you,” she mutters in his ear._

_“That’s my girl,” he replies before coming._

-

Kylo holds her hand the entire way back to the ship. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to. The firmness of his grip says it all. 

When they see the _Falcon_ in the distance, Kylo pauses. “I didn’t think you’d do it,” he said.

“Do you think I was wrong to?” she asks and he looks at the ship. They can see Ben in the cockpit. 

Kylo shakes his head. “I’d burn the world down if something happened to the three of you,” he said. “And then I’d want someone to put me out of my misery.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Rey says.

“Doesn’t it?”

“You said you understood her. You didn’t say whether you thought what I did was—”

“It’s balanced here again now. Can you feel it?”

Rey takes a slow breath, closing her eyes. It feels like morning, and evening. It feels like midnight and noon. 

Day and night. Night and day. Light side and dark. _Balance._

“No,” he says. “I don’t think you were wrong to do it. I’d have done it if you hadn’t. I’m more surprised that you did.”

“Why, you didn’t think I could kill my mother?”

The words slip out, and she knows he knows what she meant, knows he catches the slip of her tongue, the way her cheeks are heating at the words. This mother wasn't Rey’s mother. _What if she had been?_

“No,” he says. “I didn’t think you could kill your mother. I didn’t think you would have it in you.”

Something about him burned when he said it. _No one should have it in them._

Rey reaches a hand up and traces the scar down Kylo’s face. “You’re not the only one who hates. And you’re not the only one who needs to learn to forgive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Mortis](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mortis)   
>  [Darksaber](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Darksaber)


	2. Day

_ _

_ Kira tastes like the sea. _

_ Not that Rey knew what the sea tasted like until after she’d first tasted Kira. Salty that covered up the sweet, a little bit tart, refreshing as spring air.  _

_ She tells this to Kira, after her wife has spun to oblivion and back, after the flush that inflames her chest has started to ease.  _ You taste like everything I never had.

_ Kira looks at her almost quizzically. Rey is easy with her emotions. Kira is not.  _

_ “Don’t go turning into Ben and getting all poetic on me,” she says. She cups Rey’s cheek as she does, though, a way to gentle her words, sweeten them.  _

_ “I wouldn’t know poetry if it hit me across the face,” Rey says forcefully, clambering up Kira’s body and pressing her lips to hers. “But you taste like the sea.” _

_ At first, she thinks it’ll go the way that all of the nice little things she’s told Kira will go. Kira locks her heart so deep in her chest that it’s practically in her gut, and the only time she ever really shows softness to anyone is in the dark, twined together, the words little more than a whisper. But it’s when they’re next on the seaside on Bal'demnic, and Ben is complaining because Kylo has thrown him bodily into the water in play, that Rey realizes that Kira never forgot. _

_ “I’m drowning,” Ben complains, rubbing stinging salt water from his eyes, spitting it out.  _

_ “By definition, if you can breathe, you’re not drowning,” Kylo says from where he’s swimming. There’s a hunger in his eyes, and Rey is sure that Kylo’s going to drag Ben beneath the waves again soon. _

_ “You could do worse than drown in me,” Kira calls. “Maybe you need some practice.” _

_ “Drown in you?” Ben sputters. “What?” _

_ “Rey says I taste like the sea,” she says blithely. “Maybe you’ve forgotten. It’s been a long time since you’ve done it.” _

_ Ben practically purples. _

_ “Oh, come on, show her a good time, man,” Kylo says, slinging his arm around Ben’s waist, and Rey is sure from the way that Ben stiffens that Kylo has grabbed his groin. _

_ “I do,” Ben mutters. _

_ “He does, right?” Rey whispers to Kira. _

_ “Yeah,” she says, her fingers drifting lazily along the hip of Rey’s bathing tog. “He ate me out last night. But he’s never told me I taste like the sea.”  _

-

When they crack atmo, the sun is high in the sky, blindingly bright and reflecting off the surface of the waves below. Kira reaches a hand out and toggles the dimmers on the duraglass in front of them, dimming the cockpit.

She glances her way. “What, I felt like keeping my retinas,” Kira tells Rey, correctly reading the affront on her face. Rey rolls her eyes and Kira grins. “You boys almost ready?” she calls over her shoulder. 

Somewhere in the ship, the boys are doing something. Rey doesn’t know. If they’re having sex, it’s Ben center-stage because they’d be able to hear Kylo. They might just be napping. If they’re napping, Kira’s call won’t wake them; if they’re fucking… they probably won’t care.

Kira is watching her as she arcs the  _ Falcon _ across the waves. “This is it?” she asks.

“This is it,” Rey replies. “I can feel it.”

“Ok,” Kira shrugs, kicking her feet up on the dashboard in front of her and arching her back. Her breasts press out a little bit and Rey tries not to think about them as she shoves Kira’s thigh. 

“Ben’ll kill you if you have your feet up there.”

“If he catches me,” Kira replies. There’s a devious twinkle in her eye. “I kind of like it when he catches me.” But she drops her feet back to the floor all the same. “What are we looking for here, anyway?”

Rey doesn’t reply. There’s only so many times she can say the phrase “I don’t know,” without feeling like a complete fool. Kylo never pressed her, but Kylo had been in the palace with her when they’d encountered...

Midnight? The mother? Every time she thought about it, a shiver crept up her spine.  _ You can’t have one without the other.  _ And yet from her lips, it had seemed like a curse. Or a prayer. A prophecy, even.

“Hey,” Kira says and she grabs Rey’s upper arm, and it isn’t until she hears Kira’s voice go soft like that that she realizes how tense, how panicked she’s gotten. “It’s ok. It’s ok.”

-

_ Three weeks off Jakku and Rey is married. _

_ She’s not an impulsive person. It comes from being your own everything for so long. Impulse is dangerous. Impulse isn’t to be trusted unless it is carefully weighed and rationalized. _

_ But she finds herself holding hands with Kylo and Kira, who are holding hands with Ben. She and Ben are garbed in light, the two of them in darkness. They look up at the stars above and there’s this humming feeling. “ _ The Force _ ,” Ben told her. _

“But the Force isn’t real,”  _ she replied. _

_ Ben just smiled at her, not a belittling smile, but a  _ you’ll see _ sort of smile. _

_ And she did. _

_ She’d spent so much of her life not trusting anyone that it was strange to trust this quickly. It feels like things clicked into place the moment she saw them, like things were lining up perfectly in a way they never seemed to for her. Ben had come back for her, had told her he wouldn’t let her be alone. And she knew, down in her gut, that he wasn’t forcing her. That he—that all of them—would accept it if she said no. _

_ But she didn’t want to. _

_ She’d spent her whole life wondering how she’d find even one spouse, much less the three for a full marriage.  _ What if they’re settling for me?  _ an unhelpful voice in the back of her mind whispers. But she doesn’t think they were settling for her. It doesn’t feel like they are. It feels like they’d found her. And that she’d found them. _

_ She kisses Kira, then Kylo. She presses a kiss to Ben’s left cheek, then his right, while he mirrors the motion.  _ Balance _ , she thinks, but doesn’t really understand. What is balance?  _

_ She doesn’t know.  _

_ They seal it in bed, all four of them together—her careful not to touch Ben, Kira and Kylo careful not to touch one another, but everything else is hands and lips and groans and sweat. There are whispers of dire fate to those who touch their moiety, of death and curses. Light begetting more light, or dark begetting more dark sets everything off balance. And everything must be balanced. _

_ What does balanced mean? She doesn’t really know as her lips find Kira’s, as her fingers trace her clit while Ben fucks Kira until the other woman is crying out and trembling. What does balance look like as Kira sucks on her cunt while Kylo traces her lips with his cock, Ben’s tongue in his mouth? She doesn’t know. _

_ In that moment, she doesn’t care, either. She just knows she has it. They have it. _

_ Waves break, and stars explode, but the four of them have balance. _

-

They land on the biggest island in the archipelago, a large mountain that juts out of the water. 

It’s like Mortis where they feel things vibrating in the air around them. Unlike on Mortis, Ben isn’t so worried that he insists on staying by the ship.

“What’s up there?” he asks, pointing up the mountain, past a set of rock huts. 

“Let’s check it out,” Kylo replies and they set off, hand in hand, climbing a steep green hill towards a huge, dead-looking tree midway up the cliff. 

“Want to go?” Kira asks her, and Rey pauses. Something about this island is calling to her, but it’s not up the hill. It’s… lower. She frowns.

There’s a rocky beach, where they’ve landed the  _ Falcon _ but for the most part, it’s sharp cliffs down into the water. 

Rey tends towards the light and bright usually. She pushes out, strikes far. She doesn’t examine too much what lies within. But that’s what it feels like right now, that ache that’s too deep to be external. Deep down and dark. 

Her feet carry her along the cliffs, Kira trailing behind her. She doesn’t say a word, she just lets Rey lead. 

-

_ Ben’s great, but Ben can be a jerk.  _

_ “It’s because he was actually raised with a family,” Kylo tries to soothe Rey as she buries her face in a pillow. “He doesn’t always know how to keep his foot out of his mouth. He doesn’t know what hurts and what doesn’t until it—” he cuts himself off. _

_ Until it makes Rey burst into tears and leave the room. _

_ It had been a simple comment. An errant, unthinking one. He’d been frustrated with his dad, which was only fair. He’d been complaining, he’d said he’d wished he’d never had a dad. _

_ And everyone had gone quiet. _

_ Kylo had gotten up, Kira had glared at Ben. And Rey— _

_ Her head had gotten loud. Had gotten empty. Had gotten echo-ey.  _ Come back!  _ she’d wailed as if hoping they’d hear her. _

_ How she’d gotten from the kitchen to the bed she shared with Kira, she doesn’t know. She hadn’t expected Kylo to follow her because he’d gotten up, but he did, and he is stroking her back. _

_ “He didn’t mean it. He’ll apologize once Kira’s done chewing him out.” _

_ Rey is trying not to listen, trying to focus on Kylo’s hand, but she can’t quite ignore it as Kira’s bellow gets even louder. _

_ “Pull your head out of your ass for once in your life, will you? You don’t hate your dad, and maybe think for a second how we’re going to hear it. Rey spent  _ years _ waiting for her dad. Did she tell you that? She used to mark the days on the wall of her AT-AT.” _

_ Rey burrows into the pillow. _

_ “She doesn’t have to make it about me just because I’m crying,” Rey mumbles. She wishes she were the one yelling at him. It was hard to yell at Ben, though. Kylo, sure. Kylo was easy to yell at. He’d smirk at her, and say  _ thank you, darling _ , and it would just make the sex better in the end. Ben was soft around the edges, and didn’t like thinking he was a disappointment. He brooded when he did.  _

He was just trying to get support from us,  _ Rey thinks miserably. It wasn’t that he didn’t deserve it. She imagines she’d grate against parents too, if she had them.  _

_ “It’s easier for her to defend you than to defend herself,” Kylo points out.  _

Just like it’s easier for you to comfort me than to comfort yourself,  _ Rey doesn’t say. _

_ Kira storms into the bedroom and flings herself across Rey. There are hot tears on her face and she buries her face into Rey’s neck, kissing it desperately. “He’s a nerf-herder, don’t listen to him.”  _

_ Quietly, Kylo gets off the bed and leaves them alone. Rey pulls Kira close and holds her tight until her breathing settles. _

_ She hopes that Kylo has gone off to Ben, but she doesn’t think she’ll ever know. She doubts very much that either of them will talk about it. _

-

The opening that cuts through the rock is perfectly round and lined with dark, dead seaweed. Seaspray glistens and pearls on the rock and plant. 

It’s whispering to her, in a way.  _ Down here. _

_ What you’re looking for. _

_ The satisfaction you crave. _

She glances at Kira. Kira’s expression is unreadable—or at least, her eyes are. There’s a smirk on her lips but the humor and symbolism she finds in the visual never makes it out of her lips because of whatever is going on behind her eyes. 

Something’s down there.

And Rey knows that Kira can feel it too.

-

_ Kira teaches her things about her body she’d never known. _

_ It wasn’t that she hadn’t touched herself, or didn’t know what she liked. _

_ She just didn’t know that she could come four times in an hour. _

_ “Stars,” she groans when Kira is done with her. She can’t move. Her every limb feels both light and heavy, the dim lighting of the bedroom seems brighter than usual. Her skin is humming, her heart fluttering like a bird in her chest. _

_ Kira doesn’t say anything. Quiet as usual, she presses a kiss to Rey’s breast, then rolls onto her back, a contented look on her face.  _

_ “Where’d you learn how to do that?” Rey asks. _

_ Kira gives her a sideways glance. “What do you mean?” _

_ “I mean…” she begins, then swallowed. “Never mind.” _

_ “You mean how many women have I been with?” The question is neither gentle nor harsh. It is as neutral a question as she’s ever heard from Kira’s lips. _

_ “Yes,” Rey says with an exhale. _

_ Kira shrugs. “Don’t really remember. It’s not like I counted.” _

_ “But a lot?” _

_ “Some.” _

_ Rey looks sideways at Kira. “I’ve never been with anyone before you all,” she whispers.  _

_ Kira gives her a smile. “That much was clear,” she laughs. “You’re learning.” _

_ “You’re not disappointed?” _

_ Kira grabs Rey’s hand and slides it between her legs. Rey begins to rub in little circles, the way she noticed Kira liked.  _

_ “Not disappointed,” Kira says, her eyes fluttering closed. “Not at all.” _

_ Her slit is drenched. It feels like every time Rey touchs it, it’s wet, but this is different. This is her wife having spent nearly an hour licking her cunt and having enjoyed it. Rey slides four fingers into her easily and Kira lets out a little mewl.  _

_ A moment before, she’d been languid, satiated, tired, but suddenly she feels electrified. Suddenly she wonders how long she could do this, how many times she’d make Kira shudder and shake and call to powers beyond what’s knowable. She bends her head and sucks Kira’s tit into her mouth, nipping at it while Kira hissed, while Kira begs her not to stop. _

_ Rey doesn’t stop. She doesn’t want to stop, and she has all the time in the world to make Kira feel as good as Kira makes her feel, to show her what she’d learned. _

-

“I think there’s water down there,” Kira says. They’re crouched around the hole, looking down. 

“I can’t swim,” Rey says.

“Then I’ll go first. I won’t let you drown.” Rey blinks at her. Kira rolls her eyes. “You’re not just not going to go down there.”

“Yeah,” Rey grumbles. If Kira weren’t there she’d do it, she supposes. She’s glad she’s not alone. 

Her heart lurches when she sees Kira disappear between the rocks and she hears a splash below.  _ She’s not going to drown. _

“The water’s nice,” Kira’s voice echoes from below. “A little salty, but refreshing. Come on down.”

“You promise you won’t let me drown?”

“Have I ever let you down?”

No, she hasn’t. She’s relied on Kira like she relies on herself. But that doesn’t mean she’s not a little afraid the water will go down the wrong pipe.

_ Come on, _ Kira’s voice flits across hers.  _ It’s all right. _

Rey hesitates. Then she feels a tug of the Force on the front of her shirt and she’s jerked down into the hole.

The water stings as it slaps her front and she flails, gasping, salty water getting into her mouth.

She feels another tug, Kira’s hand finding her shirt and guiding her up towards the water. 

“I was getting there!” Rey coughs and spits. The water is horrible in her mouth. Some of it had gone up her nose too and it’s stinging. Her eyes are burning.

“Sometimes you need a push,” Kira points out.

“Sometimes  _ you _ need a push,” Rey grumbles as she kicks inelegantly towards a rocky outcropping.

\- 

_ Kira gets night terrors. They’re hard to miss, even when she’s sleeping with Ben and not Rey. _

_ Her yells shake the ship, and when she wakes, it’s always in tears, her fingers crawling over her skin as though trying to peel it from her bone and muscle. She hates being touched after them. _

_ She never tells what she dreams about, not even the one time she gives Ben a black eye for trying to get her to wake up. She apologizes profusely. Rey doesn’t know if it’s because she doesn’t remember, doesn’t want to remember, or if she’s afraid she’ll never be able to unsay the words. _

_ Without fail, whenever she has woken screaming and sweating, it isn’t Rey, or Ben, who pulls her into their arms—it’s Kylo. Kylo cocoons her in his arms, whispers something in her ear. They sit together for a long while, with Rey and Ben just hovering. _

_ Kira eventually falls asleep again, she always does. But in the morning, the dark bags under her eyes are deeper than they usually are. Her eyes are emptier, more haunted. She’s quieter, and off in the distance. _

_ One morning, Rey just sits with her. She doesn’t think that saying anything will bring her out of her thoughts, but suspects she doesn’t want to be alone. _

_ That’s the thing about all of them. None of them ever wants to be alone. _

_ And she thinks Kira avoids it most of all. _

\- 

The cave wall is glowing at them, reflecting light that’s not really there. Even the dim sunlight from the cloudy day above doesn’t really illuminate the cave from the opening they’d both jumped through.

It’s like the cave is whispering at them and there’s this sort of buzzing in the corner of Rey’s mind.

Kira’s hand finds hers as they both stare at their reflections. 

They look very alike. Not identical, but close. But the glowing wall of the cave isn’t a perfect mirror. Their faces are a bit blurred and if Rey didn’t know that Kira was on her left, she wouldn’t be able to tell which was her and which wasn’t.

_ Show me my parents,  _ she thinks as she stares at the wall.  _ Show me who I was meant to be. _

She’d known she was light, she remembers—through headaches and nightmares—being left behind on Jakku. But she can’t remember faces, or voices. She’d thought she had once—the voice of her mother, maybe.  _ I’ll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise.  _ But that hadn’t been memory—it had been prophecy, and it hadn’t been her mother’s voice. It had been Kira’s.

_ Show me my parents.  _ That was what she desired, right? That’s what the whispering of this dark cave had been, that it would give her the satisfaction she craved. 

It was like seeing a line of herself over and over again. She raised the hand that wasn’t in Kira’s and the Rey in front of her raised her hand; she snapped and the snaps echoed all around her; she looked behind her and saw nothingness—saw herself. 

_ You are your own past, present, and future, _ something seemed to whisper.  _ You are the sands of Jakku, the seas of Ahch-To, the perpetual spring of Mortis. You are the Force made flesh, bringing the balance of day and night and day and night and day and night and _

She blinks. Her eyes are stinging now, though the salt water is long gone. She glances sideways at Kira, and Kira—

Kira’s crying. Her face is a mask of misery and fear, tears are streaming down her face. Whatever she sees in her own reflection, whatever the cave is whispering to her—

“Kira.” Rey tugs her hand, tugs it hard. “Kira, look at me.”

But Kira can’t look away. She’s shaking her head slightly. Her mouth is open, her lips drawn down and Rey can’t bear it, seeing her look like that. She drags Kira away from the mirror wall, pulls her into her arms and cradles her head in her hands. “Be with me,” she whispers. “Be with me. Be with me.”

The cave is still echoing all around her.  _ Day and night and day and night and day and _

The Mother on Mortis had said she didn’t want to be alone anymore. She’d said something about balance, about light and dark, and day and night too. Kira’s the dark to her light, and Kira doesn’t break down crying when she’s awake—not ever.

But Kira is clinging to her, and Rey can feel her heart hammering against her chest as she mouths at Rey’s shoulder—not a kiss, but some sort of attempt at finding solace. 

“Let’s get out of here,” Rey tells her. 

-

_ Rey puts them in different categories. _

_ Ben is easy to be around, and Kira is too. _

_ Kylo isn’t.  _

_ And Rey can’t bear to be by herself anymore, which means she’s probably in the same category as Kylo. How had she managed for so long on Jakku? How had she spent years and years and years alone in her own head? The longer she does it now, the more she feels like she spins out of control. _

_ “Of course,” Kira tells her when she mumbles it to her one day. They’re on Carida, doing something for Ben’s mom. She and Kira are crouched on a rooftop, keeping an eye on Ben and Kylo in case things go sideways. Which they will. Things alway go sideways when the boys take the lead. “You get acclimated to your own pain when it’s all you have. But you don’t have to be in pain anymore, do you?” _

_ “Neither do you,” Rey whispers back, and Kira gives her a dry look. _

_ “I’m fine,” she says before pausing. “Or at least, I’m better than I was. And I’ll keep getting better. Ok?” _

_ “Do you like to be by yourself?” Rey asks her. Below, Ben and Kylo cross their arms over their chests, pull themselves taller, make themselves look more muscular and threatening. Clearly things weren’t going the way they wanted, or the way they’d planned. _

_ “Yes,” Kira replies at once. “I never got to be by myself when I was younger.” The nebulous younger that Rey knows so little about because Kira doesn’t talk about it. She knows enough, from hints and slip-ups, to know there were slum lords involved, hierarchies of children who were fighting to survive.  _

_ “But do you like to be with yourself?” Rey asks. “That’s what I meant.” _

_ Kira doesn’t reply. _

_ Which means, Rey knows, she doesn’t, but refuses to concede the point. _

_ She takes Kira’s hand and squeezes it. Kira squeezes it back. _

_ “Ah hell,” she hears Ben shout below. Things are going sideways, just as she suspected, and Kira begins firing her blaster at once. _

_ Her lips are smiling but her eyes are far away. _

-

It’s harder than it should be—getting back out of the cave.

They hadn’t really thought the thing through. It’s hard to jump out of the water. Something about the cave makes it hard for them to focus on propelling themselves up and out.  _ Night and day and night and day and night _ echoes in Rey’s ears, and she can only imagine what’s in Kira’s.

Rey flails against the water to keep herself afloat and Kira seems lost to whatever she’d seen. Her gaze is distant, her motions half-hearted. She won’t be able to push Rey out of the water the way she dragged her in.

So Rey focuses. She breathes the way that Ben always tells her to when she’s stressed out and shuts out the sounds of the waves, of the echoing  _ night and day and night _ , even of her own breath, and she flies upward, grabbing at the damp rock above and hoisting herself up and out.

She doesn’t waste a second, doesn’t hesitate. She tightens her fist and tugs and a moment later Kira is flying upwards too, landing on the rock and yelping. Her reflexes—catlike ordinarily—were distracted and she lies there on the stone for a long minute, running her hand up and down a scrape on her forearm. Rey crosses to her and offers her a hand and, after a moment, she takes it. 

“What did it show you?” Rey asks her as she pulls Kira up gently. Kira swallows. 

“My parents,” she says. Then, sounding helpless, young, exhausted, “My grandfather.”

She doesn’t say more. She doesn’t need to. And Rey tries not to feel jealous that Kira had been given answers where she had once again been denied them as she takes Kira into her arms again and holds her while she sobs. 

-

_ It takes Kira the longest of all of them to warm to her. Oh, they have sex. Kira is the one who shows her that sex can happen without love. Just the right amount of horniness, loneliness, and invitation, and you’ll find yourself with someone’s fingers in your cunt. Even if she’s your wife. Even if she’s supposed to love you. _

_ Kira does love her, but Rey’s not entirely sure she likes her. She’s prickly whenever the boys ask Rey about her life on Jakku. She gets up from the table, leaves the room, makes huffing and disapproving sounds. _

_ “What’s your problem?” Rey asks her one morning when they’re doing dishes together. The boys cook, the girls clean. Ben’s a really good cook, and Kylo’s not bad, but they also make a fucking mess. But it’s fair, since they cook. _

_ Kira snorts. “Nothing.” _

_ “Liar,” Rey snaps. “I’m not stupid, you know. I can tell there’s something.” _

_ “There isn’t,” Kira replies, reaching across Rey to grab the soap.  _

_ “Liar,” Rey repeats. _

_ “I’m not a liar.” Kira’s voice is hard. “I’m many things, but a liar isn’t one of them.” _

_ “Then why are you lying to me right now?” _

_ “I’m not a liar. I don’t lie. You do, which is not my problem, it’s yours.” _

_ Rey gapes at her. _

_ “What am I lying about?” she asks, too breathless to growl. It feels like Kira had slapped her. Hard. _

_ “I was waiting for my parents to come back to me,” Kira quoted at her. “I used to mark down every day I spent waiting for them.” She gave Rey a hard look. “They were never coming back. No more than my parents were for me. You lied to yourself. I didn’t. That’s your problem, not mine.” _

_ “But you having a problem with it is your problem,” Rey snaps at her, reaching to grab back the soap she’d taken. _

_ “Is it?” Kira asks. “Or are you just frustrated that I’m not immediately fawning over you like the boys? That I’m wondering how trustworthy you are if you can’t be trusted with your own mind? Are you making it a problem that I’m being cautious and thoughtful? Because I’m not making a problem out of it. You are.” _

_ Rey gapes at her. Her eyes prickles as tears well in them. _

_ Kira’s face is hard as the Star Destroyer shells she’d scavenged in. “I remember my parents leaving me,” she says. “I remember my mother telling me she loved me, that she’d be back for me. I remember knowing even then it was a lie. People who lie aren’t worthy of love. So don’t lie to me. Don’t lie to yourself, but don’t lie to me.” _

_ Kira leaves the kitchen. Rey stands rooted to the spot, unsure if she remembers how to breathe. _

-

They return to the  _ Falcon _ , all curiosity about the rest of the island thoroughly doused. They use the fresher, standing under the hot water together in silence. Rey applies some bacta to Kira’s scrapes and they curl up around one another and wait for a long while. 

After what feels like an hour, Kira asks, “What did it show you?”

“Nothing,” Rey replies dully. “Just… me.”

“I’m jealous,” Kira says darkly. 

“Don’t be.”

“That’s something to be properly grumpy about. I’d kill to be grumpy right now.”

Rey’s mouth goes dry. “Was it so heartbreaking?”

“Yes,” Kira replies firmly. 

_ Ask it.  _ Is that Kira’s voice in her head? Or is it herself? Sometimes they sound so much alike she doesn’t know when it’s Kira or her, especially when Kira’s raw like this.

“Who are they?”

“Palpatine. Palpatine’s son and his wife. Palpatine was my grandfather.”

It’s like all the air leaves the cabin. Rey doesn’t know what to say. The words just echo over and over again in her head.

_ No wonder Kira’s so powerful. _

_ No wonder she’s so dark. _

“You’re not them,” Rey says.

“I know that,” Kira says dryly. It’s the most like herself she’s sounded since they got out of the cave. “I know that I’m not. No more than you are those nerf-herders who left you on Jakku. But…” And Kira swallows.  _ It’s like you thought just now. _

_ I heard that. _

_ I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to— _

_ It’s fine. It was comforting to hear it. I’ve been thinking it myself. _

Kira turns her face towards Rey and nudges her nose against Rey’s. They don’t kiss. Kissing isn’t the comfort she’s looking for right now.  _ Just hold me, ok? Just don’t let me be alone. _

_ Not ever. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Bathing Tog](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bathing_togs)   
>  [Carida](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Carida)   
>  [Bal'demnic](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bal%27demnic)


	3. Daybreak

_ They find Rey last.  _

_ It makes sense.  _

_ She’d spent most of her life on Jakku, toiling beneath the sun, her skin sand-raw. Not exactly the sort of place where love blossoms under the sky.  _

_ The second she’s off the  _ Millennium Falcon _ , though, she hears someone calling, “Dad!” and turns. _

_ Later, she learns the name of the tall man walking out of the sun, but the only thing that really crosses her mind when she sees him is  _ oh _. He smiles at her with warm brown eyes, a crooked smile that makes him look young. He helps his dad unload the  _ Falcon _ , periodically glancing over his shoulder at Rey. _

_ “She’s Light,” Han tells him. “Don’t get any ideas.” _

_ He must be Light too. She can’t help but feel a little disappointed in that. He’s slim, with wide shoulders that taper to his waist, and Rey’s mouth is dry in a way she hasn’t really felt since Jakku.  _

_ “You say that like I don’t have a place for her,” he says and she shivers. _

_ She isn’t used to it. The idea of being wanted on sight. But that’s Ben for her. Wanting her the second he clapped eyes on her, even if he couldn’t have her. _

_ - _

They land on Lothal at daybreak, the sun reflecting bright off the sands as the  _ Falcon _ settles neatly near a cliff. Ben’s hands twitch on the controls, leveling the ship in the wind. 

“This it?” Ben asks her.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

She swallows.

She knows why he’s asking. Looking out over the sands—

It’s like Jakku: there’s nothing. But down in her gut, she can feel it. Everything’s off balance, and this feels like the fulcrum.

_ You can’t have one without the other. _

But what was missing? She didn’t understand. Their marriage was complete, all four of them. Kira, and Kylo, and Ben, and Rey. And yet something felt missing. Something was  _ gone _ . 

“Yeah,” she says at last. “I’m sure.”

Ben gives her half smile, an attempt at encouragement. Rey tries to smile back.

She likes quiet moments like this. Just the two of them in the cockpit. Kylo and Kira  _ can _ fly, technically, but it’s Ben’s ship and he and Rey—they fly best together. 

-

_ “You look like a delinquent,” she tells Ben. _

_ “I really don’t.” _

_ “You really do.” _

_ “You don’t make Kylo cut his hair.” _

_ “I would if he didn’t try and jump me every time I grabbed the scissors and turn it into some power move.” _

_ “So what you’re saying is I should turn it into some sort of power move?” _

_ “Shut up and sit down.” _

_ Ben does with a grumble, and Rey takes the scissors from her utility pack and a comb she borrowed from Kira and begins to part his hair. _

_ “Have you ever cut hair before?” he asks her. _

_ “Sit still or else I won’t be responsible for any accidents you cause.” _

_ “Because my mom will never let me hear the end of it if my hair looks bad.” _

_ “Shut up and sit still.” _

_ She begins to cut. His ends are split, and his hair is tangled. Kylo’s hair is impeccable; Ben’s should probably never be allowed to grow long.  _ But I like it long,  _ Rey thinks, trying to trim it with care so that most of it remains on his head.  _

_ She likes the excuse to run her fingers through his hair, to toss it back and forth, tousle it, make it seem like— _

_ Like a fantasy. A fantasy she shouldn’t have. A fantasy they’d probably leave her for. They—whoever they are—always say that it breaks the balance, moiety with moiety.  _

_ Rey sometimes feels at her most balanced with Ben. _

_ “Will you let me cut your hair if you mess it up?” Ben asks. _

_ “Absolutely not,” Rey replies. “Kira cuts my hair.” _

_ “Really?” She can hear the frown in his voice. “I didn’t know that.” _

_ “You’re sometimes wildly oblivious about things. As is evidenced by this bird’s nest on top of your head.” _

_ He grumbles. “Well, I call next cut if my hair looks bad.” _

_ “It’s not going to look bad.” _

_ It doesn’t look bad. It doesn’t look great, but it doesn’t look terrible. It looks a million times better than what it was before, though, and Ben turns his head in the mirror to catch the angles of his face and the way the new cut falls with it. _

_ “I like it,” he says at last. “You’re cutting my hair from now on.” _

_ His eyes flicker to her in the glass and her mouth goes dry again. The way he says it— _

_ It’s hard to explain. The way he can make her feel special just by looking at her. Kira and Kylo make her feel special, too, but Ben… _

_ “I’m glad you like it,” she says as casually as she can. _

_ Maybe it’s because she can’t have him. Maybe it’s because he found her and it feels like he’s never once left her side. Maybe it’s because… _

_ She doesn’t know. _

_ But he makes her feel light and glowy for hours after she’s swept away the last of his hair. _

-

“I’ll sit this one out,” Kira says almost immediately as the gangplank drops. She doesn’t like it when it’s too hot. She’d have hated Jakku. Rey’s glad that she’ll never see it.

“Suit yourself,” Kylo says stepping forward. “Come on Rey.”

But Ben grabs his arm. He’s staring at the sands in front of them, his gaze distant. “I want to go.”

Kylo frowns. “You sure?”

Ben looks at Rey, and she knows he feels it too. That strange yearning, aching, calling. That off-balance something. “Yeah,” he says. He grabs his lightsaber and hooks it to his belt, then he and Rey descend together.

The sands stretch far and wide. In the distance, distorted by the heat, she can see the outline of a city. It’s strange, seeing a city in sand. Jakku could never sustain one.

Then her feet stop moving. Not because she can’t move them, but because they’re where they’re supposed to be.

“It’s like something’s missing,” Rey says aloud. 

“Yeah,” Ben agrees. He closes his eyes, and she can feel it, a whisper of him extending out with the Force, through the sands, reaching out, reaching down.

Sometimes she forgets how powerful Ben is. She’s strong, but she’s still learning. Ben’s strong enough to shake the world.

Or shake the sands anyway. 

It’s like he’s digging a hole, except the hole is half a mile wide. The sand piles itself higher and higher around him.

“Ben!” Rey yells, but it’s too late—she’s already sliding down into the pit. Her fingers scrabble and scrape, but there’s nothing to hold onto as she sinks down, and down, and down.

-

_ Ben’s the only one who had a family. The only one who has to send messages to his mom and dad letting them know where he is. _

_ He gets into a fight with his dad about the  _ Falcon _. “You have this new shiny rig because you lost this thing, and Rey found it fair and square. Finders keepers.” _

_ Rey would never have dreamed to think that the  _ Millennium Falcon  _ was hers, but Ben insists it is—even if he’s usually the one that takes the pilot’s seat.  _

_ “It’s still in the family, at least,” his dad grumbles. “If you get so much as a scratch on her—” _

_ “We’ll still have treated her better than you,” Ben replies without batting an eyelash. _

_ It’s a ship. A real ship. And it’s… hers? _

_ She can barely believe it. _

_ Ben’s already up the gangplank, walking through the corridors of the ship as if he’s known it his whole life. He probably has. _

_ But it’s her ship. _

_ Her husband, and her ship. _

_ She takes a step forward, then another, hope bursting out of her chest. _

-

“You’re lucky I like you,” she mutters, still spitting sand out of her mouth as Ben slides down the sandy hill he’s created and settled next to her. 

“I knew that already,” Ben said. He’s on his feet already and holds out a hand to pull her up. She continues to glare at him grumpily, and he gives her a smile. “Lighten up, will you?”

“Is that supposed to be funny?” she demands. Then she shifts her attention.

Behind them stands a cliff face, covered in painted carvings.

Carvings she recognizes.

_ Mortis _ .

There are three of them—the father, and his two children. Two lights and one dark. Daylight, evening, and morning, but no sign of night. __ No sign of the Mother.

_ Off-balance. Too bright, not dark enough. _

_ Should I have killed her on Mortis? _

She reaches for Ben’s hand as a chill climbs her spine. 

“How do we get in?” Ben asks, looking at it. “Kylo said there was just a door on Mortis. This looks locked.”

Rey moves closer, pulling him along. She hasn’t let go of his hand, and he hasn’t let go of hers.

When they are right at the base of the frescos, Rey looks up at the father’s face. He is old, and slim, his long white beard stretching to his knees.

“Mother,” she calls to the stone. “Mother, let us in.”

And swirling whorls of bright darkness begin to break through the stone.

-

_ Ben introduces her to his husband and wife. They make a fine set, Rey can’t help but think. All tall, all dark-haired, all black-eyed. Kira’s face is guarded as she gives Rey a once-over. Kylo’s is more openly hungry. _

_ “Diamond in the rough?” Kylo asks Ben. _

_ “I think so,” he replies. The back of his hand brushes the back of Rey’s. “She scavenged no Jakku for most of her life. She knows how to find the good and worthwhile.” _

_ “But is she good and worthwhile?” Kira asks. _

_ “She’s standing right here, thank you very much,” Rey cuts in. She doesn’t like being talked about like she’s not there. She’s  _ not _ on Jakku anymore. She isn’t one of Unkar’s workers. She got out. She flung herself to the stars. _

You should go back. Keep waiting.

_ But Maz had told her that no one was coming back for her, that she was done with waiting—that people were waiting for her. _

_ “How’d you find her?” Kylo asks, his eyes on Rey’s lips. There’s something hungry in his eyes that frightens her because it feels too familiar.  _

_ “Dad did,” Ben says, shrugging. He slides into the cantina booth next to Kira, then glances at Rey. “Come on. It’s all right. We won’t eat you.” _

_ “Yet,” Kylo adds, and Rey’s stomach flips with the lust she can hear laced in his voice. How can people lust so quickly? That’s never been her. She wouldn’t recognize lust if it hit her over the head—and Kylo’s more than hitting her over the head. _

_ She slips into the booth next to Ben and her knee brushes against his.  _ Is that allowed?  _ It sends a fire up her leg that makes her throat go dry, makes her look down at her hands.  _ You can’t want him,  _ she tells herself.  _ You’re not allowed. Even if you don’t—

_ “Don’t you think you’re moving a little fast on this?” Kira asks. _

_ “We moved fast with you,” Ben points out. _

_ “Yeah, and look what a mess that was,” Kylo teases. Kira elbows him.  _

_ They’re all so familiar. Family. Spouses all. And Rey… _

_ She gets to her feet, she hurries from the table. She feels like she’s gonna be sick. _

_ “Hey!” she hears Ben calling. “Where are you going?” _

_ He catches her outside, vomiting into the bushes. He strokes her back gently, and she pretends the tears that begin to stream down her face are because she was sick, not because someone had followed her, is stroking her back, is whispering that it’s ok, that she’s not alone. _

_ She’s not alone. _

_ And yet she feels so wildly alone and she can’t bear it. This empty ache in her that she couldn’t begin to articulate if she tried. _

_ She looks up at Ben. _

_ “Thanks.” _

_ “Of course.” He pauses. “You don’t have to want us,” he adds. “It just felt right. You know that feeling? When things feel right?” _

_ She looks up at Ben’s face, and yes—yes she does. _

-

Blackness stretches out around them on all sides. They walk, hand in hand, down silvery pathways, past silvery doors. In their ears are silvery voices.

_ I won’t leave you, Padmé! _

_ No one’s ever really gone. _

_ Ezra! Look out! _

But loudest of all is the only voice she recognizes, the voice from Mortis:  _ Where are they? Where are they?  _

All around them, they see flickers of… she’s not sure.

Life? Death? Everything in between. 

She sees Ben’s uncle, young and whole, clinging to a man garbed in black as he lies dying.

She sees Kira, cutting down her grandfather, her eyes glowing yellow.

She sees Kylo swinging his saber as though he were born to it, but he’s cutting down children, not defending them.

She clings to Ben as she keeps walking.

_ Where are they?  _

But Ben’s standing still, his eyes are glued to a vision ahead of them. 

The door is open and on the other side, she sees—

She’s dead. Her body is limp and lifeless. Ben is holding her close, pulling her to him as though unable to process what he’s seeing. She can’t be dead. She can’t be.

She stares as he pauses, centers himself, and bright silvery light she can’t see but knows is there begins to flow from him to her.

She watches her own eyes open. Watches her rise in delight, watches them kiss for what feels like an eternity and a second all at once. 

Then she watches Ben vanish and her heart shatters.

-

_ She tries not to be creepy. She tries not to listen in when Kylo’s fucking him, or imagine what it would be like if it were her instead of Kira. She doesn’t say a word about it, doesn’t ask if they all wonder the same things, if the forbiddeness charges through their mind, impossible to avoid. _

_ But she does notice things she wishes she didn’t notice—unhelpful things. How flushed his cheeks are after he’s come, the way his hair sticks out with sweat—especially after she cut it. The glassy eyed look of pleasure, and release, and relief, and happiness. _

_ It makes her heart stop. Not break. Not break because she has him. She does have him. _

_ But she doesn’t get to make him look that way. _

_ He doesn’t get to make her feel that way. _

_ Maybe one day it’ll stop crushing her, but oh, she aches from it now. _

-

He’s still holding her hand.

She’s still holding his.

He’s not dead, or gone. He’s there with her. She can hear him breathing. He can hear her.

She squeezes his hand. 

Then his arms are around her, and his lips—

She’s never kissed Ben’s lips. His cheek, yes. The tip of his nose on occasion. But not his lips. Those plush, red lips aren’t for her. But they’re on her now, and nothing else matters. The rules of the world exist beyond wherever it is they are. Here there aren’t rules. There can’t be rules because if there were rules, she wouldn’t have just watched Ben die.

She wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him closer. Her heart races. They are alive. Whatever it was where they weren’t alive—there’s something wrong with it. She has Ben, and nothing can take him from her. Nothing could. She wouldn’t let it. 

Oh, the thought of existing without him—it’s too painful to consider. It’s enough to make her knees buckle, to make her sink to the ground—but he sinks with her in perfect parallel, his lips never leaving hers. He pulls her onto his lap, feasting on her, holding her tight, holding her close.

“You’re not allowed to die,” he growls into her mouth.

“Nor you,” she replies, half a sob, half a declaration. “Don’t you dare.”

“I won’t if you don’t,” he tells her firmly.

“Deal.”

Only then does she stop kissing him. She’s breathless, weightless, and there’s Ben, warm in her arms, warm underneath her. 

_ We kissed _ , she thinks, and the thought echoes through her mind, louder than the other voices. 

_ Where are they? Where are they? _

_ What’s next? _

She shivers.

Ben swallows. He clears his throat, makes to open his mouth. There’s something nervous in his eyes, and Rey knows what he’s preparing to say.

And then, loudest of all, and right next to them, “Where are they?”

-

_ Things change after Ahch-To. _

_ Kylo’s ribbing that Ben’s a child of legacy never reaches his lips again. Rey knows it’s for Kira. Kira whose eyes are red sometimes, whose face is haggard. She is angrier, she is louder when she argues. _

_ She doesn’t talk with any of them about it, but one day, after she lashes out at Kylo for just being, Ben grabs her by the arm and the two of them go off into the sunset, heads bent. _

_ “Two somebodies and two nobodies. I guess that’s balance too,” Kylo grunts at Rey. “You’re not a secret princess or something, are you?” _

_ She shakes her head. “My parents are blue-blooded junkers.” _

_ It hurts less than she thought it would. Maybe because she’d spent so long aching for them, and seeing what Kira hadn’t wanted to find but had anyway… maybe it’s a blessing that she’s just Rey. Rey Nobody.  _

_ Standing alongside Kylo Nobody. _

_ “Do you think he’ll make it hurt her less?” Rey asks. _

_ Kylo shook his head. “Kira doesn’t take solace from anyone, but he may be better at talking her down than we have been. He’s good at that.” _

_ He is. _

_ Of all of them, he’s the caretaker. She thinks it’s because he came from somewhere, had people who took care of him.  _

Who takes care of you now? Will you give until there’s nothing left of you?

_ Rey promises herself she’ll never let that happen. She’ll take care of him too. _

-

The woman standing before them doesn’t glow--she is that bright darkness the way she was on Mortis. She doesn’t fade in and out of focus. She is solid and sturdy, as though Rey had never killed her. Her hair is long and white, her eyes are sad, her face lined with age. A real person, standing there in the middle of everything with them. 

“Mother?” Rey asks, climbing off Ben’s lap and getting to her feet.

“Where  _ are _ they?” repeats the woman. 

“I don’t know,” Rey says. “You mean your husband and children, right?”

The woman nods. “Please. I need to find them. It’s not balanced without me.”

“Balanced?” Ben asks as he stands as well. 

“It’s too light,” she says. “Too light. There must be four. Light and dark, day and night, dawn and dusk. Balance. I was separated. Where are they?”

“I don’t know,” Rey whispers. “Are they here?”

“Where are they?” the Mother keeps demanding. “Where are they?”

_ Where are they _ , Rey had wondered to herself endlessly.  _ Mother, father, come back! _

“We’ll help you find them,” she whispers, looking around. She sees Ben fading again through that same portal. She shudders. “We’ll…”

“Balance,” the Mother says, and her eyes are on the same portal that Ben just died in. “We must restore balance.”

-

_ Balance. _

_ What is balance? _

_ What is Light and what is Dark? _

_ She’d never really thought about it until she was married. There hadn’t been any reason to question it, to wonder. She was born Light. She knew that. But it felt arbitrary. It felt… constraining. _

_ No, it didn’t just feel constraining because whenever she pushed Ben’s hair out of his face, her heart fluttered. It just didn’t make sense. _

_ Shouldn’t balance imply that one had a little of both? Even in the darkest night, there was the light of the stars and moon. Even the brightest day had long shadows. So why was she only Light? Shouldn’t she be a little bit Dark too? Shouldn’t that balance come from within as much as without? Couldn’t she be whole and complete? Shouldn’t she try to be? Why did she have to be divided—one part of a binary? Why did it need to be a binary? Some darks were darker than others, some lights lighter. Wasn’t everything a spectrum? _

_ Evening and morning matches, dawn and dusk, day and night. None perfectly light, none perfectly dark. _

You’re just thinking this because you want Ben.

I’m not.

You are.

_ But why was wanting Ben forbidden? It was arbitrary. It was painful. Tatooine had twin suns, but they didn’t set the planet off balance. _

_ Maybe that’s what she and Ben were—twin suns. But even twin suns cast a shadow. There was darkness to be had in their light. _

Balance is understanding what you can and can’t have. What can and must be.

Balance is accepting someone else’s rules and definitions.

Balance is realizing that those rules and definitions are breaking you and you need to find a balance.

The only reason I feel like I want him more than the others is because I can’t have him. How is that balance?

_ That’s when she goes for a walk, her head spinning. _

_ “Rey?” Of course Ben sees her slipping out. “You ok?” _

_ She doesn’t know how to answer. She wants to know how to answer, wants to be able to say the right thing.  _

_ The balanced thing. _

_ Instead she steps towards him, steps into his arms, and lets herself breathe the stale scent of his dried sweat and no flower in the stars smells half as lovely. _

-

It could be minutes. It could be hours. Days, or years.

Rey doesn’t know.

She doesn’t feel tired. She doesn’t feel hungry. She doesn’t need to piss, or drink, or anything. She doesn’t feel wholly human.

She feels too human.

She is still holding Ben’s hand as though afraid letting it go will mean he’ll disappear the way he did in that vision.

“Was that because things were off balance?” she asks the Mother as they pass portal after glowing portal, peering through to see all sorts of things. She sees dueling jedi, kissing queens, lost children, aging grandparents. But she doesn’t see the Father, Daughter, or Son.

“Maybe,” the Mother says. “Maybe not. Some is, and some isn’t. Where are they?”

Ben stays quiet the whole time. Whenever they pause before the gateways, his hand will twitch in hers. They see Ben alive, and old, holding Rey in his arms.

They see Kira young and alone and afraid.

They see Kylo tearing his hair from his head, screaming to get the voices out.

They see Ben killing his father.

They see Rey counting endlessly. They see Rey beaten but not abandoned, her nose broken, her eye black and blue.

Ben pulls her into his arms when she sees that. She can’t look away. Her heart is hammering, but she feels nothing at all as she watches her mother scream at her.

At her side the Mother watches impassively. “Equal and opposite reactions,” is all she says when she continues to almost toddle down the silvery walkways.

“We should get out of here,” Ben whispers as she walks.

“We can’t leave her like this.”

“We don’t know what will happen if we help her. Everything could change.”  _ I could lose you. _

_ You could lose me. _

Rey stands on the tips of her toes and kisses him.  _ I’ll never lose you.  _

“We have to help her.”

Rey feels like she’s lived a thousand lives before they reach what feels like the last door in the place. 

They pause in front of it, but it’s closed.

“I can’t open this one,” the Mother tells her sadly. “It is locked.”

Ben steps towards it, examining the glowing glyphs that line it. They are no different from the other glyphs they have seen. 

Rey steps towards it too, taking Ben’s hand again. 

“Do you feel that?” she whispers. Something is humming inside her, getting louder the closer she gets to it.

Ben nods.

“Father,” he whispers to the door. “Father, let us in.”

The door begins to open and the light behind it is so bright that they both flinch and peel away from it.

They hear footsteps, see the shadow of the Mother running forward, throwing herself through the door.

The door slams shut and everything is dark again, darker than before.

But the humming is gone, and Rey’s heart is beating more quietly. She hadn’t even noticed how loudly it was going until its echoes faded.

Balance?

“Let’s get back,” Ben says at once, and he doesn’t wait for Rey to reply before dragging her along the causeway again. 

_ What if Kira and Kylo are gone? _

In all the visions they’d seen through all the doors, Kira and Kylo were there together, or her and Ben. Sometimes her and Kylo, and Kira and Ben, or the boys and the girls. But it was never all of them together.

_ Balance. Surely she would have wanted balance for all of us too. Not just for her? _

Her heart is loud again in her chest as she breaks into a run.

-

_ That’s the thing about Ben. He gives her hope. _

_ Hope so much that she can’t quite be afraid. Because even if she is afraid, she’s not alone. _

_ “Ready?” he asks her as they finish loading up the  _ Falcon _. Her ship, their ship, her spouses—and herself. _

_ Blistering, painful, agonizing hope, from the moment she’d clapped eyes on him. _

_ She smiles at him, and he smiles back, the wind ruffling his dark hair. _

_ “Let’s go.” _

-

Out of the temple they burst. Up the sands they climb—a slower endeavor than they’d want because running in sand is hard and running up a sandy hill is even harder. They don’t talk as they go. Rey’s thirstier than she’s been since Jakku, and when they reach the top level again, she digs out her canteen and drinks heavily while Ben does the same.

She wipes her mouth and stares up at the cliff and the  _ Falcon _ . She sees two figures in darks, sitting at the edge, looking out. Relief floods her.

“They’re ok,” she says, nodding to them. 

Then Ben’s tugging her into his arms again, holding her close. She can feel his heart beating against her chest as he shakes a little bit. She presses her face into his neck and kisses.

He stills.

A shiver runs down her spine.

_ This is a start _ . She can feel it. He turns his face towards hers and tentatively finds her lips again.

The sands don’t open up to swallow them whole. The stars don’t fall overhead. There’s no crash of lightning to strike them. 

“I won’t hide it from them,” Ben tells her. “I won’t lie to them. To the rest of the stars, fine, but not to them.”

She swallows. 

Part of her feels like the world will fall apart, like everything they’ve built together will be destroyed. 

But the thing about Ben is that he’s always helped her choose hope. So she’ll hope now. Hope that things will change, but for the better. They only have themselves to fear.

So she kisses him again, and nods, and they turn to cross the sands again, hand in hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Lothal Jedi Temple](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lothal_Jedi_Temple)   
>  [World Between Worlds](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/World_Between_Worlds)

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! You can find me [here!](http://linktr.ee/crossingwinter)


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